


North Dakota Brian

by chrundletheokay



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Substance Abuse, listen: Dennis Reynolds has come unstuck in time, this isn't a fun one sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:15:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23281582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrundletheokay/pseuds/chrundletheokay
Summary: This Christmas feels like every Christmas. Except it doesn’t, and that’s what’s so wrong. There are gifts in the boxes, and a mom who is sober, and trains lined up on the carpet.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	North Dakota Brian

**Author's Note:**

> TW:  
> \- strong allusions to past childhood sexual abuse, including by a parent  
> \- canon-typical substance abuse  
> \- canon-typical Frank and Barbara being horrible and abusive

The living room looks like the wrapping paper station of a department store. For the million time since arriving in North Dakota, Dennis feels out of place. Out of his element.

It’s early December, and Mandy has just gotten Brian settled in bed for the night. Before her is a large box, emblazoned with a brightly colored picture of a wooden train set.

“What’s that,” he asks.

“Christmas present for Junior,” she answers cheerily.

“Oh. Why?”

Mandy cocks her head. “Why?” she repeats. “It’s Christmas, silly.”

“Yeah, but—”

A look of understanding passes over Mandy’s face. “Oh, I get it. You’re one of those fellas who waits till the last minute to shop, huh?”

“No, I just… The fake-out,” he stammers. The phrase seems to mean nothing to Mandy. “Didn’t your parents ever…?”

The look on her face says no.

“It’s just… Kids have to learn, Mandy. You can’t have everything you want in life. You don’t just get shit handed to you. You gotta work for it.”

“Brian, he’s _three,”_ Mandy says pointedly.

The fake name still throws him off, despite the fact that he asked Mandy to keep calling him that, despite the fact that he introduces himself as Brian to everyone he meets. Pennsylvania Dennis is dead; North Dakota Brian is real.

North Dakota Brian has a chance to start over, to do things right this time.

He blinks a few times, and Mandy comes back into focus. “Right,” he agrees reluctantly.

The problem is this: Dennis doesn’t remember what it was like to be Brian's age, or anything close to it. He doesn’t remember there ever being a year where he was disappointed to no longer receive presents. Based on this, it seems reasonable to assume there never _were_ any gifts. He turned out fine, though. North Dakota Brian turned out just fine. 

—

Christmas morning, Brian Jr grapples with the largest present, which is almost as big as he is. His tiny baby fingers scrabble along the crisp, reindeer-covered wrapping paper. At last, with a little help from Mandy, he tears back the paper, revealing the box within. Upon seeing the photo of the train set, he screeches happily, giggles, and flaps his hands.

When Brian Jr has settled down enough to surrender his grip on the box, Mandy opens it for him. Dennis’s heart flutters in his chest. He can’t quite place why, until Mandy reaches into the box and pulls out its contents.

It’s a train set. An actual train set, exactly like the one depicted on the outside of the box. The box isn't empty. It isn't full of dirt or rocks or dog shit, or gifts for Mandy; it’s an actual fucking train set, for Brian.

The boy squeals, grabs the caboose from his mother, and waves it in wide circles around himself, babbling excitedly. There’s a lump in Dennis’s throat. It’s been a while, but it feels the way crying used to do. Without a word, he stumbles through the living room and out the back door.

—

_It wasn’t just the lack of presents, although that certainly was a big part of it. But no, it was—_

_“You’re really gonna like it this year, what I got for you,” dad says with a cackle that does not bode well for the twins._

_“We’re not stupid,” Dennis snarls. “There’s never anything in there.”_

_One year, dad tries to convince them they’ve been good kids and “have earned something real special.” Christmas Eve, the twins huddle under Dee’s comforter as their parents shout drunkenly at each other downstairs._ _As they drift off to sleep, they review their recent accomplishments — all the reasons dad might be pleased with them._ _They made bank the previous month, picking pockets at Chuck E. Cheese’s, just the way dad showed them to do. Maybe that was it, they decide._

_The next morning, when the twins go downstairs for breakfast, they find dad standing by the Christmas tree with a camcorder. “I’m real proud of you, kids,” he says warmly. “Go see what’s under the tree.”_

_Afterward, the twins stand over piles of wrapping paper and countless boxes filled with gifts for their dad. “Psych,” he shouts. “You’ve been rotten! Real brats. I’d put you up for adoption, but your whore mother won’t let me.”_

—

Mandy won’t let him smoke. She talks all kinds of shit about secondhand smoke, childhood asthma, and emphysema. She’s not pleased about the vaping, either — something about toxins and popcorn growing in Dennis's lungs. It sounds eerily enough like the kind of pseudo-scientific bullshit Mac would spout, so Dennis listens, for the most part. 

Crack, of course, is also out of the question. Even if Dennis were to allow himself that guilty pleasure, he wouldn’t know where to find it.

None of this would be as bad if it weren’t for how pissy and judgmental Mandy acts when Dennis gets drunk around the kid.  However, at times like this — okay, most nights, really — it’s hard to drink without going over the edge into full-on, piss-Mandy-off drunkenness.

Without any of his vices to turn to, there’s nothing to take the edge off, nothing to make the moment more tolerable. 

Dennis considers, for not the first time, that he may have a problem.

Sitting out back of Mandy’s house, he takes deep breaths of the harsh winter air. Rather than growing calm, he feels increasingly light-headed and dizzy, his chest tight with panic. Anyone who thinks deep breathing is a cure-all solution is a moron; Dennis’s psychiatrist is a moron.  ****

Coughing and gasping for air, desperate for a distraction, he pulls out his phone and logs into Facebook using his sockpuppet account. At the top of his news feed is a long status update from Charlie. Dennis quickly scrolls past it. To no one’s surprise, Charlie’s posts are consistently incomprehensible. Below Charlie’s post, a short video of Dee starts to play on mute. She sits in her living room, talking at the camera. The smug grin on her face says she’s telling a joke, and is convinced she’s hot shit. Past experience dictates that whatever she's saying is cringeworthy. The only comment on the post, from Mac, reads: _dude wtf is this?? stop posting. bird._

Dennis laughs. It comes out as a sob.

—

Mandy finds him sitting on the back stoop. She says his name hesitantly.

Brian’s name.

“I’m fine,” he answers, although his voice belies the claim. “I think I just miss my sister.”

He’s surprised to hear the words coming out of his mouth, hates himself for saying it, hates even more that it feels true. There’s more to it than that, of course, but he can’t explain it — not even to himself. It hurts too much to think about.

“You should call her,” Mandy encourages him.

“Yeah, maybe,” he lies, because it’s easier than the alternative. Easier than having another argument about _Why don’t you give them a call,_ or _Maybe you can visit after Christmas,_ and _Don’t you miss your partner?_

_—_

_The Christmas after Dennis gets his driver's license, mom buys him a new Range Rover. The resulting argument between his parents lasts for hours. They’re so absorbed in it, yelling so loudly that the twins are able to walk right out the front door unnoticed. They drive mom’s old Mustang — the one she’d been loaning to Dennis before the Range Rover — over to Charlie’s mom's house._

_(Even if dad hadn’t stolen the keys, Dennis wouldn’t dream of driving his precious new baby to Mac and Charlie’s shithole of a neighborhood.)_

_Dennis doesn’t see dad for a few days after that. When at last they run into each other again, dad demands an explanation for the new car and why mom bought it for him._ _Dennis shrugs. “She likes me. She’s a good mom,” he answers._

_“She’s a shit mom,” dad spits._

_“Well, I’m her favorite, so…”_

_“It’s unnatural, how she is with you,” dad says suspiciously. “She ever touch you funny?”_

_“What the fuck, dad,” Dennis screeches._

_“What? I’m just askin'!”_

_—_

“Junior is looking for you, you know,” Mandy says.

“Yeah,” Dennis acknowledges distractedly. His stomach swims with acid and nerves.

“You should see him with those trains. It’s really somethin’ — he’s lining them up on the carpet.”

_—_

Back in the living room, Brian Jr screeches in distress as Dennis shows him how to put the train track together. He bursts into tears as Dennis demonstrates how to push the train along the tracks. His face turns red and he flails his limbs around desperately. Dennis drops the train and backs away. It doesn’t make sense, that he wants to cry, too.  Dennis doesn’t have feelings.

—

_When he’s a child, Dennis lines his stuffed animals up along the perimeter of his bed. They watch over him at night when the only light in his bedroom is the small nightlight that dad insists he’s a pussy for still using. When mom comes into his room, she turns off the nightlight and tells him he’s too old for stuffed animals._ _After she threatens to throw them out, Dennis hides them under his bed in orderly rows. They watch over him from under there. They hear everything that happens in the dark of night, even if they can’t see it. Sure, they don’t do anything to stop it, but worse things could always happen. Dennis can’t prove they’re not protecting him from any of that shit, whatever it may be._

_When Dennis is fourteen, he throws out all his stuffed animals in a fit of disembodied rage. All of them except for Mr. Tibbs, that is. The next morning, the experience feels like a nightmare, but he wakes up with Mr Tibbs by his side for the first time in years, and a big empty expanse under the bed._

_Later in high school, Dennis keeps his cosmetic products lined up perfectly along the vanity, his books in even rows along his shelves, his posters tacked at precise ninety-degree angles on the walls. Everything inside of him is chaos. But if his environment is orderly and controlled, he can stave off the implosion that feels, at this point, inevitable._ _Dad calls him anal, and a girl. Mom scolds Dee for the state of her room, which is slightly disorganized in comparison. She tells Dee for the millionth time that she should be more like her brother._

_Dee comes in his bedroom sometimes and messes with his shit just to see him cry._

—

Dennis doesn’t have feelings.  Dennis gets drunk.

Brian sobs and wails, and throws himself to the carpet and kicks and screams. Dennis desperately wants to do the same, but refuses to allow himself. He keeps his mouth clamped shut, except to take big swigs of vodka. Experience tells him how it feels to be a little kid, being yelled at by a parent. He’s not supposed to be like Frank. That was the whole point of this insane exercise, although c learly it was a mistake to even try in the first place. He feels lost. He knows where he is, and _when_ he is, but— 

Half in the present, half in the past, that’s what it feels like. The torn up bits of wrapping paper in the recycling bin are the same wrapping paper he and Dee tear off their own presents — year after year, hoping for something more. Mandy’s disappointed frown is his mother’s scowl of disgust when he haltingly tells her about the librarian, when he says: _I don’t think I liked it very much. Is that bad?_

Dennis hasn’t gotten this drunk in months, and he absolutely will regret it in the morning. It doesn’t matter, though. Tomorrow feels so far away. Christmas feels like it will never end. Time stretches and bends, like those fucked-up clocks from that Dalí painting. This Christmas feels like every Christmas. Except it doesn’t, and that’s what’s so wrong. There are gifts in the boxes, and a mom who is sober, and trains lined up on the carpet. 

It feels like being fourteen again. It feels like being four, and forty, and eighty, and every age between and beyond, all at once. It feels like not existing at all. It feels like not being drunk enough. 

So he drinks more. 

—

Dennis stands back, hands jammed into his jean pockets as Mandy helps Junior settle into bed. She pulls the comforter up, tucks it in around him, and kisses his forehead. She tells him Merry Christmas, and goodnight. She tells him _I love you,_ and then she leaves, the nightlight still on in the corner. 

Dennis wants to be sick for reasons he suspects have little to do with the vodka roiling around in his stomach. 

What the hell is he doing here? 

—

_Mom emerges from her bedroom Christmas afternoon, as Dennis and Dee sit in the corner of the living room. They've spent the last several hours glaring at the empty boxes and wrapping paper, plotting their revenge. The late hour and the lazy way mom comes down the stairs indicates she’s already drunk, or on something._

_“Mom, he did it again,” Dennis whines._ _She grunts noncommittally._

_“Hey, maybe you can get us presents next year, to get back at dad. I bet he’d really hate that,” Dee eagerly suggests._

_Mom glowers at her. “I gave birth to you. Isn’t that enough?”_

—

The day after Christmas, when Dennis has sobered up, he finds an email in his inbox. It's a receipt, confirming his purchase of a plane ticket back to Philly.

He doesn’t go home.

Why would he?  North Dakota Brian is doing just fine.


End file.
